Joanie Laurer, that is, whose name still needs to be followed by the clumsy
yet mandatory "formerly Chyna of the World Wrestling Federation" - for now, at
least.

Laurer spent six years living the larger-than-life Chyna persona in the
squared circle, becoming the first female wrestler to compete (as it were)
with the big boys. Having left Vince McMahon's sports entertainment empire
this year, she's now trying to reinvent herself as Just Joanie - actress,
model and fitness guru. Well, Just Joanie plus whips, chains, slave girls,
dungeons, really big dogs ...

"Putting me in lacy lingerie and panties is not me, it's not my style,"
Laurer said on the phone yesterday from Toronto, where she was promoting her
cover-gracing appearance in the January issue of Playboy. The 10-page
leather-heavy pictorial looks like a Frank Frazetta Conan painting come to
life, or a particularly interesting lost episode of Xena: Warrior Princess.

"It's fun, it's fantasy. It's still very, very strong, but it's cool at the
same time," she said. "I think it's going to draw a much younger demographic.
Even when you look at the cover, it looks like a comic book. A Playboy comic
book."

Got that, moms and dads? It's the second time in just over a year the
five-foot-10, muscle-bound, silicone-enhanced uber-woman with the distinctly
un-Playboy physique has bared it all for Hugh Hefner's magazine, though this
time it's without the vast marketing might of the WWF behind her. And she
likes it that way.

"I have to give kudos to Playboy, because Hef is a 75-year-old man who's
done business one way for most of his life," Laurer said. "If you look at his
girlfriends now, they're all carbon copies of each other; most of the women in
the magazine are carbon copies of each other.

"I'm not saying they're not beautiful ... but that is not reality out
there, and I think we haven't got a taste of reality. There are beautiful
women of all shapes and sizes."

Leaving behind the WWF has meant a lot of changes for the wrestler formerly
known as Chyna, aside from the softer (and reportedly surgically assisted) new
look.

Laurer sold her dream house in New Hampshire just weeks after construction
was finished and moved to L.A. There she's grappling with the beginnings of an
acting career, taking "any job under the sun for no pay" including roles in
Tracker and Relic Hunter and an appearance on a celebrity edition of Fear
Factor that featured Laurer's head sealed in a box with hundreds of squirming
bugs.

"I was really yelling 'I quit!' but you couldn't hear me because the
scorpion was over my mouth," she said.

The parting of ways with the WWF also followed her parting with former
flame (and fellow wrestler) Triple H. Laurer says she's currently dating but
hasn't settled on a Mr. Right, and doesn't need a Mr. Right Now.

"I think before I kind of would have ... I don't want to say gone with
anybody, but it was a lot easier for me to just connect with somebody out of
loneliness, or wanting to have that security.

"I'm not looking for that quick fix just to have somebody there. I like
that, I miss that, I want to be in love. But it's going to have to be the real
deal."

Laurer says being in Playboy certainly helps with male attention - gee, go
figure - but fans and fellow celebs are more or less not an option. Neither
are men who are intimidated by Laurer's various assets.

"The men who are physically intimidated by me don't approach me. They'll
talk about me, and they have very big mouths most of the time, but I have more
suitors now than I ever did in the past."

You'd think posing nude in Playboy and laying bare her troubled past in her
tell-all biography If They Only Knew would make Laurer easy prey for her
critics, but she says the opposite is true.

"People are cruel and the media are cruel and they're constantly digging at
you and picking at you and starting rumours about you," said Laurer, who has
freely admitted to breast augmentation (and once even ruptured an implant
during a match) but always denied steroid use.

"What are you going to say about me? Go ahead. It's nothing I haven't
already heard or anything I'm ashamed of or won't admit. Once you can put that
out there, it kind of sets you free."